Rapid Expansion of Banana Plantations 
Alarm Compostela Rice Farmers

Rice farmers in Compostela Valley in Davao del Norte, southern Philippines are shifting to bananas in the face of the government’s failure to implement genuine land reform.

By Gilbert Pacificar and Grace Uddin
Bulatlat

COMPOSTELA VALLEY - Tatay Temyong is turning 59 this month. For most of his life, he has planted palay on a small plot of land, even after his neighbors converted their farm lots into banana farms. But recently, he noticed how his rice paddies were drying up. Now, he, too, is thinking of shifting to bananas because palay is no longer enough to sustain his family’s needs.

Tatay (or father) Temyong believes that the chemicals being sprayed on banana farms around him caused his rice paddies to dry up. This and a bad harvest helped him to reach his decision.

The old farmer thus left rice farming in favor of cardava bananas. He has eight surviving siblings to support and a child to send to school. He hopes that the latter would soon grow old enough to help him eke out their living

However, Tatay Temyong soon had troubles with transporting his banana harvest to the market. Traders are also buying his bananas at a very low price. For all the hassles he goes through, it seems now that planting cardava bananas is not enough to lift his family from the throes of poverty.

This condition has pushed Tatay Temyong, at his old age, to get a second job as a security guard in a nearby plantation.

Disturbing

The plight of Tatay Temyong is akin to that of many peasants today. Most of them become workers in large plantations because of poverty. Particularly in Compostella Valley, the conversion of rice farms into banana plantations has become a disturbing trend.

In an interview with Bulatlat, members of the Davao del Norte Farmers Association (DANOFA) said farmers are being driven away from their field.

DANOFA spokesperson Amancio Carmelo, or Tatay Mancio to farmers of the province, noted how some of them even went to the gold rush site of Mt. Diwalwal to fight for economic survival only to land in the same situation as agricultural workers. Most of them became workers in banana plantations in neighboring municipalities.

Kardo’s story

There are others though who have no land of their own, possessing only their willingness to do any kind of unskilled labor.

Kardo, who requested that his name be withheld, is a father of two who earns below minimum wage. He is a contractual agricultural worker and has spent the last seven years of his life working and living in a banana plantation. Specifically, he is called a “suksuker” or someone who wraps banana bunches in chemically-treated plastic bags. But still, he may never become a regular employee, contrary to what labor laws provides.

A quota of 20 hectares of bananas must be sprayed, tagged, bagged in a period of one week. For which, Kardo and other workers receive only P1,050 a week.

But Kardo and his co-workers dare not complain. They know there are a lot of people who do not have jobs and would willingly take theirs despite the small pay. The plantation management is also not complaining either, for they stand to gain from the insecurities of their workers.

Government priority

Compostela Valley province’s 4,667 sq. km. land area covers 11 municipalities. There is adequate amount of rainfall and water reserves necessary to sustain varied agricultural products on the valley’s sandy loam soil, most especially bananas exported to developed countries. Nine out of the 11 municipalities are now engaged in production of bananas for export.

The accelerating expansion of banana plantations has been boosted by the pronouncement of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s 10-point agenda, wherein a stress for agri-business was clearly laid out by promising the distribution of two million hectares of land in Mindanao.
 
Agricultural business is top on the list of GMA’s 10-point agenda. In her State of the Nation Address (SONA) in July this year, the president promised to create between six to 10 million jobs. The president claimed she would “develop one million hectares, if possible two million, of agribusiness land by making them productive and transporting their products to the markets efficiently.”

Referring to the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), Carmelo of DANoFA said “CARP is a fake” (Dili tinuod ang CARP).

He said farmers do not have the farming implements and capital to succeed under CARP. “CARPed land eventually gets sold in the deceptive manner of loan assumption,” Carmelo said.

CARP led farmers to believe that they can own the land, he added. “In reality, CARP is deceptive. Without protection against the high prices of farm inputs and cheap farm gate prices, CARP beneficiaries stand to lose every inch of land they gained.” Bulatlat

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